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CWGT1
The''' inaugural season (CWGT1)' of the Crapwagon.com Grand Touring World Offline Series began on November 19, 2004 in virtual Belgium with the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, and ended on December 11 of the same year at the Daytona International Speedway road course with the Daytona Finale. (The Nadira 24 Hours of the Nurburgring at the Nurburgring Nordschleife was the original scheduled finale, but when that race failed to complete the full 24 hour distance, then-standings leader Mr. Vengeance requested one more event for the season.) Entering the third-to-last event of the season, Mr. Vengeance was in a four-way tie for the standings lead, but a dramatic move on rookie driver Cohiba at Rouen proved pivotal in earning him the first ever CWGT title. RobGuru won Rookie Of The Year, notable as the first series recruit who had not participated in the predecessor OSCRA GT and Wildride GT series. Major event winners were Season 1 champion Mr. Vengeance taking the inaugural Spa race, FCYTravis lasting a full 24 hours at LeMans, and the obscure power&glory (in only his 7th career race) managing to be the last surviving car at the Nurburgring. Top Stories With the demise of SimRacin40's OSCRA GT, and the subsequent Wildride GT, series founder TheStranger felt that the 8+ cars representing Crapwagon.com in those two entities needed a new home. He had also had a minor disagreement with SimRacin40 over how to conduct a 24 hour event (SR40 felt race restarts - via grid trimming - were acceptable after a scoring computer crash, where TheStranger considered a race final at that point, as any restarts would allow teams to have unlimited time to fix their virtual machines). As Wildride GT wound down, TheStranger announced CWGT on November 18, 2004 and immediately began organizing a field for the first event at Spa. The first driver to join the newly-formed circuit (and thus have no roots in OSCRA GT/Wildride GT) was RobGuru, the eventual rookie of the year. Unlike future seasons, very little of the Season 1 schedule was set in stone, other than having the three 24 hour events of Spa, LeMans, and Nurburgring in their respective positions on the calendar. This is the only time that some attempt at simulating real-life travel patterns was widespread in the schedule; future years have been more arbitrary with geographic clustering only used for thematic purposes. CWGT1 is one of only two seasons to use the PWF Trans-Am mod for Papyrus's NASCAR 2003 Racing Season (NR2003), a formula now retroactively known as the "Extended Trans-Am" or GTX era (in similar fashion to the real-life late-1970s IMSA car designation). Season 1 CWGT grid sizes in the inaugural campaign ranged from the Original Sixteen at Spa all the way through LeMans, to a full complement of 42 cars at the Nurburgring and Daytona. Rookies who competed for much of CWGT1 (as opposed to only a handful of events or one-offs) were RobGuru (one of the Original Sixteen), McB, Padre, WildrideFS, and Madre. With CWGT's original intent to be a simulated version of classic endurance racing, all race lengths were in hours, and no ovals were on the schedule. The Leipzig track is the only CWGT track that never actually existed as a race course, but does exist in real life as the streets around town. The Lime Rock layout used for the first season event only incorporates a section that was planned, but not constructed in real life. Due to Mr. Vengeance's post-race request after Round 30, this is one of only two CWGT seasons (the other being CWGT3) that did not end at the Nurburgring. A spotter's guide showing most of the cars in the series by Nurburgring was made available. McB changed manufacturers multiple times (from Ford to Chevrolet to Ferrari to Jaguar) but managed his only wins in a low-budget #13 Mustang. Padre switched from Dodge to BMW midseason. At the Homestar Runner Peachtree 4 Hours, CWRT/CREP ran special liveries for every driver except Caspar, in honor of the popular web video series. Mark Tortellini's one-off ride at Nurburgring represents the only time a fictional character in the CWGT universe was called upon to fill a grid. Several key philsophies still in use in the series were pioneered in the inaugural season: - no caution flags (simulating ancient LeMans, where there were never full course yellows even for the most major of accidents) - punting HIGHLY encouraged! (it won Mr. Vengeance that season's title, as noted earlier) - dirt tracks? No problem. Croft Rallycross marked the first time in virtual sports car racing history that ostensible GT vehicles were made to race on unpaved surfaces, a precursor for following seasons. CWGT1 Team Chart Note that with the possibility of DNPQs, a "full season" ride means that a driver was listed on the roster before prequalifying at all events. No driver who joined in the inaugural season ended up bowing out of the roster before Daytona. Teams are listed in order of when they first participated in the series. Sponsors are listed without specifying which events they ran on the car. Rookies are marked with '®' (in order to qualify as a rookie, a driver could not have participated in either OSCRA GT or Wildride GT). Participants that had competed in fewer than 10 events in CWGT1 retained rookie eligibility into the following season. Season 1 champion Mr. Vengeance is entirely marked in bold. *CREP was a subsidiary of CWRT until the Season 5 merger of CWRT and d.tuned Events Season 1 thread Race length is noted in parentheses when not made obvious by the race name. Race Results Selected Race Summaries Round 1 - 24 Hours of Spa The inaugural event of the Crapwagon.com Grand Touring World Offline Series was advertised for 24 hours, but only lasted 46 minutes due to extreme attrition (a trend that has become a trademark of the circuit). While TheStranger, RobGuru, and SimRacin40 experienced life upside down, the top three finishers (Mr. Vengeance, Scott, and Dan Belcher) all found their days ended by the pit wall edge, with Mr. Vengeance making it there first and thus being declared event winner. Given the eventual championship standings, Dan's mistake here was one of several that cost him his best shot at a CWGT title. Round 3 - Mosport Mommymushbrain's first career victory in the series was utterly dominant - from pole, she led 279 of the 294 laps in the six hour event, warding off Hosehead in the waning minutes. Round 6 - 24 Hours of LeMans FCYTravis took the victory by quite a margin over Denith (who had just won his first career race at Phoenix the day before), but the real story was CWGT finally finishing a full 24 hours of a scheduled all-day event - an occurrence that still is not particularly common in the series. Round 7 - Nogaro While this race saw the debut of future superteam operator and long-time participant Padre, it served as the beginning of a long and fruitful career for eventual Season 7 champion Mazza19 - the only CWGT driver to have ever won in every single season the series has contested. Round 10 - Riverside RobGuru took his second win in three events during the first ever SoCal Swing, aided immensely by one of many heartbreaking late-race meltdowns from ABES (who would be the Season 1 Raul Boesel Award winner). Round 12 - Sebring TheStranger's first trip to victory lane, on his way to sweeping both 12 hour events in that campaign. Round 15 - Silverstone This script sounds familiar - ABES leads in the final hour, finishes 2nd. Yep. In this case the beneficiary would be eventual Season 1 title-holder Mr. Vengeance, who snookered the field on pit strategy and picked the right time to reemerge as race leader. Round 17 - Kyalami In the closest finish ever at an extended-endurance event in CWGT history, Dan Belcher found himself behind McB's unsponsored Mustang by 22 seconds with 10 minutes left in the nine-hour event. He quickened the pace and had knocked it down to 5 seconds in the final lap. It wasn't enough. McB hung on by just 1.775 seconds to take his first career win - and the one most longtime CWGT fans still remember him for. Again, a major missed opportunity for Dan that would prove extremely costly at the end of the season. Round 20 - Sandown ABES practically won the Raul Boesel Award here all by himself. He led the event with just 29 seconds remaining when his crew called him in to pit, paving the way for surprise winner Madre, who had never competed in CWGT before (and became one of two drivers to win their first ever event). Her shock led to her pitting on HER final lap, nearly handing the crown to RobGuru. Round 29 - Rouen Mr. Vengeance basically won the title here - entering the event with a five-way tie for first with Dan Belcher, FCYTravis, TheStranger, and SimRacin40, the championship battle looked like it was heading to a potential Trophy Dash decider. Then he took matters into his own hands. Rookie driver Cohiba had lapped the field in his #2 STP Mustang after two hours, and was well on his way to a good finish - but the Elmo Experiments squad wasn't having any of it. At 2:18, Mr. V blocked Cohiba's line out of pit lane, forcing the latter into a head-on impact with a haybale that would prove terminal. For the rest of the event, Mr. V basically ran away and repeatedly lapped Denith, before taking his crowning fourth win of the season. Round 30 - 24 Hours of the Nurburgring The debut of Evil Wilke Productions and their NRTV system provided the first mass-viewed CWGT event in series history. This was not the first ever 24h Ring involving Crapwagon.com members (that honor goes to the race that began OSCRA GT) but this would be the beginning of the fruitful relationship between the CWGT virtual sanctioning body and one of the greatest road courses in the world. With an infusion of virtual cash from Nadira, the 24h-Rennen featured quite a few new entries in the field: Nadira herself, thebigtymer, fourrunner, mclark2112, future champions Stalker and raptor, Meesh, Chief, kahauna dreamer, Kingsnake2012, IMS-Pitraider and MHF. Fictional jurnelist and driver Mark Tortellini even made it into the field, where rookie 16 1994 took the pole. After half the field found themselves behind the pit wall within the first 60 minutes of the race, several contenders emerged. The standings at the start of hour 2 were familiar to everyone in the audience: Cohiba and Mr. Vengeance in the top two spots! Then presaging his bad luck at the track in Season 2, Mr. V rolled the #57 Elmo Experiments Mustang over. Rookie power&glory - the only Lamborghini operator on the roster - made it to 2nd at the 2:38 mark. About 14 minutes later, Padre pitted and power&glory led for the first time. Padre wrecked while leading some time later, and by the four-hour mark, only five cars remained: power&glory, paper, Wildride, Cohiba, and MHF - ALL rookies. At the 6 hour mark, Paper led power&glory and Cohiba - only to crash out, ending Padremobile's quest for the Season 1 Nurburgring title. Then Cohiba saw his day end after the 7th hour with accident damage...and the unheralded power&glory, in Derrike Cope-like fashion, ended up the first ever winner of CWGT's most prestigious race! Round 31 - Daytona Though CWGT was ready to declare Mr. Vengeance series champion, the Elmo Experiments magnate asked for one more race to "fairly" decide the title, and his wish was granted. Championship contender TheStranger got the pole - and he led at the 1 hour and 2 hour marks! But with a potential Trophy Dash matchup with Mr. Vengeance seemingly in the cards, the #85 Crapwagon.com/33rd Street Bistro Mustang had to pit in the final 10 minutes, giving the lead and victory to series debutante Rogue Leader, making his very first start. And Season 1 came to an exciting close, a deserving champion crowned, and a lot of memories created. Full Series Results '''Championship System' For this and the following two CWGT seasons, TheStranger implemented what was then called the "Paul Tracy System", in which wins are the only measure of success. This system was put in place as a reaction to increasingly convoluted points systems in real-life racing, most notably NASCAR's Chase for the Cup which began in that calendar year (2004). Final Driver's Standings ^ presumed finish as car was not acknowledged after the start, but did qualify. ~ presumed finish based on Nurburgring live thread; actual final standings beyond the top 5 were never posted but Doft's car seems to have disappeared after Evil Wilke and Madre wrecked Award Winners Series Champion - Mr. Vengeance with 4 wins Rookie of the Year - RobGuru with 2 wins (while he matched McB's mark, Rob reached the 2-win mark first and that was used as a tie-break) Raul Boesel Award - ABES (no wins, tons of 2nd places, and one massive chokejob at Sandown in addition to milder disappointments at Riverside and Silverstone) All-Star Race Winner - SimRacin40, at Salem Pat Bedard Winner - TheStranger, due to several notable flips (particularly at Spa and Silverstone) Category:Seasons